If you are an active young man or young woman, or if you are not so young and active as you used to be, do not sit down and say to yourself that you can not secure some prize as offered in our premium list. There is hardly a present subscriber who may not get others to subscribe, or interest some one else to do so. We propose to give away a great deal of money value in these prizes, and the more we are called upon to give the better we like it, for we know that while increasing our list we are at the same time widening the influence of the paper and conferring benefits upon the country. Be assured that we offer no “snide” or worthless articles. We give genuine goods for genuine work.
They have a barbarous way of testing the comparative strength of draft horses in some parts of England. At Huddersfield the other day two owners secured the tail-ends of their carts together and then put their teams to the draft to see which would give way. First one and then the other was drawn backward, “while the macadam was torn up to the depth of five inches by their struggles.” The horses were kicked and beaten to make them do their best. The London Live Stock Journal says the brutes, the men we mean, not the horses, were arrested and fined $5 each for their fun. It should have been $500 apiece and imprisonment. The whipping post is none too severe for such criminal inhumanity to man’s most useful animal.
France has about one-half the agricultural implements in use that England has, though the cultivated acres in France are greatly in excess of those of England. The reason, doubtless, lies in the fact that French farms are very small and do not warrant the purchase of the larger labor-saving machines. The manual labor of the members of the family is often sufficient to carry on almost all the operations of the little farm “patches.” The late French census gives the following list of implements: 4,800,000 plow and diggers of various kinds, 1,650,000 harrows, 20,000 drills, 15,000 mowing machines, 18,000 reapers, 60,000 chaff-cutters, and 55,000 root-cutters. As compared with our own country this is indeed a small showing. We have dozens of reaper factories that turn out yearly more machines than are owned in all France.
Our readers will notice that in our premium list, as sent out last week, the Saskatchewan fife wheat is among the prominent offers. Here is a pointer showing the estimation in which the wheat is held by those who have grown it. We take it from the Detroit Record: “Last Spring twenty-six members of the Becker County Farmers’ Union clubbed together to the extent of $5 each for the purpose of giving the Scotch fife wheat (as grown in the Saskatchawan Valley) a trial, and the result has been most satisfactory. Thirteen bushels of the wheat were bought at $10 per bushel, and Iver Christianson, of Richwood, sowed it on thirteen acres of new land, for one-fourth of the yield. The wheat was threshed last Wednesday and divided among the stockholders yesterday, each receiving twelve bushels for his investment of five dollars, the total yield being 403 bushels, 61 pounds to the bushel, of the finest quality of No. 1 hard. Mr. Wellman, of whom the said wheat was purchased, began growing the wheat several years ago from a few kernels received in a letter from the Saskatchawan Valley, and the grain has been hand picked and kept perfectly clean each year.” The members of the club express themselves as perfectly satisfied with results and indorse the wheat in the highest manner. In all our premiums we have aimed to select useful articles, and such as are calculated to meet the wants of farmers and friends.
The Northern Illinois Horticultural Society held an interesting meeting at Elgin last week. The attendance was not large, but included such life long leaders in Illinois horticulture as A. R. Whitney, S. G. Minkler, J. W. Cochrane, D. C. Schofield, A. Bryant, Jr., Dr. Slade, Wm. Kellogg, of Wisconsin, D. Wilmot Scott, H. Graves, A. L. Small, L. Woodard, and others. The papers read were brief and excellent. Robert Douglas, O. B. Galusha, and Samuel Edwards, who were not present contributed instructive essays. The election for the ensuing year resulted in the choice of S. M. Slade, Elgin, President; A. Bryant, Jr., Princeton, J. V. Cotta, Mt. Carroll, and David Hill, Dundee, Vice-Presidents; D. Wilmot Scott, Galena, Secretary; E. W. Graves, Sandwich, and J. S. Rodgers, Marengo, Recording Secretaries. The society voted to hold its next annual meeting at Elgin. We will give a digest of proceedings in next week’s paper.